Book Review of Rolo on the Planet of the Cats
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The Children’s Book Review
Rolo on the Planet of the Cats
Written by Hans Ness
Illustrated by Sofia Komarenko
Ages: 8-12 | 250 Pages
Publisher: Zira Press (2025) | ISBN: 979-8988037156
What to Expect: Cats, space travel, belonging, community, resilience, family.
In this darkly humorous middle-grade science-fiction adventure, readers are introduced to a futuristic Earth in which humans pay the price for their careless exploitation of genetic science, having become the inferiors of creatures they engineered.
Rolo has traveled a long way across the vastness of space from planet Blorx to find the fabled planet Earth—the planet where hoomans first came from and where they are more than just the pets of other, more advanced creatures. However, Earth is not at all what he expected. There are Hoomans on Earth, but they are not free and wild; instead, they are the servants and inferiors of a race of advanced cats—and neither they nor the cats believe in Blorx!
Even worse, Rolo is a criminal—an unregistered stray alien sentenced to the pound. On the run from both the officials and bounty hunters, Rolo ends up on a flying circus ship run by a fortune-telling elephant. Then, his new friend, Ailey, shares a very interesting story about a Blorxian Ark and a lost underground city of secret human refugees…
Rolo is a typical teenage boy, both curious and determined (but also unwashed whenever possible). Readers will love seeing him navigate this strange new world where he is neither a pampered pet nor at the top of the food chain. This reimagining of human dominance in the universe invites readers to think seriously about belonging, identity, and the ethics of science and social hierarchies, even as they laugh at the cat-related puns. Illustrations are scattered throughout the book, helping readers picture this strange new Earth and the creatures that inhabit it.
Funny, imaginative, and just thought-provoking enough, Rolo on the Planet of the Cats is a great choice for science-loving middle graders.
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About the Author
Hans Ness is ruled by his cat Millie in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his duties include food preparation and waste management. Before his conscription into cat servitude, Ness was originally a 7th-12th grade writing/lit teacher, turned edtech founder (Jupiter Ed), turned critical thinking researcher (Critical Thinking Project), turned author. He also dabbles in art, music, theater, social media, and hooman psychology.
For more information, visit hansness.com.
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